Alliance: An Intersolar Alien Romance, Book 6

06

Fásach decided that the smartest plan of action was to strip the Pulpit. The safehouse was closest to his neighborhood and also burnt to a crisp. Anything that survived the firefight between Vin and Roka Lokurian would only be good for parts, but those parts would go for a hefty price. He’d parked Roz on the remnants of a countertop with a towel to keep her from smearing coal all over her backside and then spent two hours hauling wrecked guns, grenades, and printing bays. He even pried the heatproof siding off the walls.

Upon returning from his second haul, his heart practically leapt from his chest. Roz was no longer on the countertop…

But knee-deep in the floor of an armory safe. She’d given him a bright smile, filthy with black soot all over her arms and legs. “I found some palladium! Does that help? I want to be helpful.” She held up a heap of metals hidden beneath the floor like a child bringing their dishes to the sink.

The exchange had disturbed him. Dolls didn’t defy instructions, and no matter that Roz was something more, he still expected her to behave like one. Sometimes she was blank-faced and empty, but perhaps it was just that she was absorbing everything. She was observant, attentive… Fásach might even go so far as to say empathetic.

As the Pipes’ bazaar lit its lanterns and raised its awnings for the night crowd, Fásach took a break, sitting in the safehouse’s exploded window, overlooking the plumes of smoke from grill carts and the sounds of vendors hawking wares from their stalls. He stared down at his holotab, where the only contact he thought might be able to get them off-moon stared back at him with a rakish glint in his lens.

Might be willing.

The first time Fásach had met Traveler was when Vin decided to shack up on the Mummer and run supply shipments as a way to get Pom Pom out of the Volcage and into an environment that would make it easier for her to survive her illness. Novak had put him and Quiopha on dock security during those rendezvous, and the guild’s continued relationship with the ship’s eccentric captain was one of the reasons they’d become Huajile’s biggest authority outside of the institute.

During those days, he’d run wild with Vin and the Mummer’s bilong enforcer, Sizzle. They’d bonded during drunken nights, damn near killing each other with their reckless dares and insults. Fásach grinned, rubbing his finger pads over the raised fang scars along his forearm. Sizzle had damn near shredded him open one night in an attempt to keep Fás from his bizarre collection of rusted old arrays. Afterwards, he’d been forced to join the guild to assure Novak and Traveler that he’d had no intention of actually eating anyone. A valid concern in the case of a bilong.

Those memories had long since tarnished though. Fásach wasn’t fit for sec jobs anymore, but he still had Traveler’s contact. The only problem was that as eccentric as the captain’s personality was, the cost of doing business was often just as unpredictable. He was under no illusion that Traveler would help him out of the goodness of his heart. He might not even remember him.

Still, it was Fásach’s only option.

“Comm Traveler,”he commanded his linguitor.

“Fásach Daen,” the biognostic’s syrupy voice rang through crystal clear in less than a heartbeat. “How can I serve Guild Gaul this sol?”

Fásach huffed, brushing the fur along the back of his neck. “You remember me.”

“I remember everyone.” A digital hiss of amusement trailed off the end of the captain’s words. “I take it this isn’t official guild business?”

“No,” Fásach sighed. “I need to get to the Mandaahl system.”

“A ticket through the Ankh isn’t so bad.”

“It is when there are four of you and three are undocumented.”

Traveler fell silent and Fásach held his breath.

“Quiopha Taurisi’s daughters,” the captain said with an investigative hum. “Who else?”

Fásach bit his cheek. He didn’t want to expose Roz to the captain, but what choices were left? He glanced at her where she’d taken apart the melted casing of the ordnance printer, her head bent over a belt of ammunition jammed inside.

“A girl named Roz,” he hedged.

Traveler chuckled. “I see. Such a chivalrous buck.”

“We need to get to Yaspur.”

“To Renata, you mean.” The silence stretched between them, and Fásach’s ear twitched with nerves. Before the pressure forced him to respond, his holotab pinged. He glanced at the notification: the Mummer’s estimated time of arrival. “Be ready to go at dock three in thirteen turns. I’ll send you data on our drop coordinates once the Mummer has had time to coordinate the path of least resistance—”

“Traveler, wait,” Fásach interrupted, a crease in his brow. “What’s it going to cost? I’m not exactly rolling in resources, and we need things. Food, clothes, weapons probab—”

“It won’t cost you a thing. Thirteen turns.”

The captain ended the comm, and Fásach glanced uneasily at Roz. She caught his eye with a distracted smile.

“Almost…” she hummed, blowing a stray curl from her eyes. The last bullet popped from the printer. “Got it!” Her smile fell and she sat back. “Is something the matter, Master Fásach?”

The yiwren creased his brow. “Just Fásach,” he corrected her with an abrasive huff. He bit his tongue to feel a sting of pain. “We’re leaving Huajile in thirteen turns.”

“That’s great news!” Roz tilted her head, cradling the bullet in her palms. “Isn’t it?”

“I think the captain knows you’re a doll.”

“Wasa doll.”

Fásach looked away and scratched his wide nose on the back of his hand with a sniff, dislodging some of the stench of sulfurous ozone from his lungs. Old, burnt oil replaced it, as strong an odor as the sludge of guilt pumping through his veins. Traveler had made it clear that he and his girls wouldn’t be paying… but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a price.

Could Fásach ask Roz to pay that price? He exhaled slowly, examining himself from the inside out, and a flush of damning heat ran through him. He thought of Safia and Misila. How cold could he get for the sake of their future?

Squeezing his eyes shut, Fásach forced out the words. “If he asks you to… to pay, tell him to fuck off like we talked about. We can find another way.”

“Okay.”

Fásach sighed, shoulders rounding out with relief. He stood up, pebbles of shattered glass crunching under his boots. Roz followed suit, the bullet laying in her hand like an injured bird. His ear twitched, looking her over.

“What sort of bionics do you have?” he asked.

“According to my system details, I am a standard pleasure unit. I have an advanced vital deck and complete spectrum vision, a line-of-sight radio transmitter, a parumauxi swarm, neurosensory regulator that appears to be damaged, metabolic regulato–”

“Wait, wait,” Fásach stopped her, putting his hands on his hips. “You have a parumauxi swarm?”

“Yes.” Roz wriggled her neoprene booties. “They allow me to target bodily damage and enhancements with more agility. Like adjusting the amount of time needed to heal the soles of my feet.”

Fásach stared at her as she joined him at the window, the stiff heat brushing the curls around her face. Parumauxi were sentient nanobots that behaved like mediplasma. There was no way something like that was standard for a doll. He should know too. He’d helped move micro-swarms on the black market in his predator-fluid days. Soldiers, mercs, pirates… A parumauxi swarm could be the deciding factor in whether you survived a raid or not. Highly illegal, but highly effective.

And insanely expensive.

Roz wasn’t safe on Huajile.

“I like the view from up here,” she mused, the corner of her mouth curling. “It makes me feel taller. What a strange feeling. Do other humans like the feeling of being tall?”

Fásach stared at her profile intently while she looked down on the market. “I think we all want to stand tall.” And he would. For Safia and Misila… maybe for Roz too. A chill ran down Fásach’s hackles as he realized just how close she must have come to the nightmarish agony of a doll in need of such advanced healing tech.

“Gather up whatever’s left to sell. We need to get water, rations, and some real clothes,” he rasped, licking the inner terrain of his sharp premolars. Suddenly the old shirt he’d given her was an insulting gesture. She deserved things that fit her, not his shitty hand-me-downs.

“Okay.”

She turned inward to the room, scanning with her full-spectrum vision. Fásach stepped in her way and carefully rolled his thermophobic hood back over her tresses. “Combs are hard to come by,” he mumbled, tucking the strays away, careful not to catch her eyelashes, “but let’s try to find one of those too.”

“What’s a comb?”

Fásach tucked the hood into the dirty neckline of his shirt, then took a measured step away from her. “Don’t worry about it right now. Let’s just pack up and get the hell out of here.”